Year 2008

New Year’s Fallout
Three of Poland’s main cities, Krakow among them, are
at odds over New Year’s latest revelries. Vying for
the dawn-of-2008 merrymaking primacy, Krakow and
Wroclaw dispute each other’s numbers of participants
in New Year’s Eve open-air parties that both
municipalities threw, 190,000 and 200,000
respectively, each figure by courtesy of local PR
men. Anyway, they dwarfed Warsaw’s meager 20,000,
which ignited an outcry in the capital city’s town
hall that has publicly contested the above
estimates.

Councilors Free Taxis
Krakow’s
City Council has voted to scrap ceilings
on taxi
fares for the city’s cabs from January 1, 2008. At the
same time it has decided to raise the number of
available taxi licenses for another 600. As Krakow
taxi drivers hail the former decision, they openly
despise the latter. The councilors believe that
their exercise in free market will result in lower
fares and better service.

Smoking Fine Municipal police fined
seven smokers and reprimanded 543 in the first ten
days since a ban on smoking at bus and tram stops
had come into force within the limits of Krakow in
February. The cops promise to be less lenient with
time and to fine smoking offenders as a rule. The
penalty may be anything between 20 and 500 zlotys.

Live in Krakow, Be Happy
Living in Krakow is most satisfying, according to the
Urban Audit Perception Survey, part of the European
Union’s Flash-Eurobarometer project. Conducted last
November by Gallup Hungary in 75 cities of the 27 EU
countries plus Turkey and Croatia, cosmopolitan
metropolis like Paris and London as well as some
close-knit communities like Finland’s Oulu and
Portugal’s Braga, it has revealed that 97 percent of
Krakow dwellers are satisfied to live in their city.
No other municipality can boast the same level of
satisfaction among citizenry save Groningen in The
Netherlands but only 75 percent of its denizens feel
strongly so against some 85 percent for Krakow. By
comparison, just sixty percent or so of the locals
said they were satisfied, either strongly or
somewhat, to live in Athens. Asked about concrete
aspects of urban life,
residents of Krakow assessed highest the
integration of foreigners whereas they seemed
unhappy about hospitalhealth
services. The survey involved 500
randomly selected individuals in each city.

Europe's Biggest Shopping
Hungary’s developer, TriGranit, vows to construct
Europe’s biggest
shopping center in Krakow early next
year. The sprawling Bonarka City Center, situated on
a 19-hectare industrial wasteland four kilometers
south of
Krakow’s central Old Town district, will
boast nearly 100,000 square meters of
shopping
floor area. The whole project will cost euro 500,000
to build, with office blocks and blocks of flats to
be added later on, and will generate over 5,000 new
jobs.

Grave Finding
The city’s corporation managing Krakow’s cemeteries
has launched an online service that localizes graves
at municipal burial grounds. The search engine
available at http://www.rakowice.eu can find the
grave of any of 280,000-plus people laid to rest at
cemeteries of Bronowice, Grebalow, Kobierzyn,
Mydlniki, Nowy Podgorski, Stary Podgorski, Pradnik
Czerwony, Prokocim, Pychowice, Wola Justowska, and
the newer part of Cmentarz Rakowicki cemetery. For
the time being some command of elementary Polish
seems necessary to feed it with required data, i.e.
given names, the surname, and the date – approximate
at least – of the burial. The service doesn’t cover
Krakow’s Jewish cemeteries nor the church graveyards
and crypts.

14.5 Million Visited Malopolska
In 2007 the
Malopolska province, Wojewodztwo Malopolskie,
attracted 14.5 million visitors, including three
million from abroad, according to a survey
commissioned by the local government and carried out
by IPSOS Polska. Most of them came to Krakow. Among
visiting foreigners Britons constituted the biggest
segment, 14.4 percent, followed by Germans (10.9
percent), and Italians (8.9 percent). On average, a
foreign visitor stayed four days in Malopolska and
spent here an equivalent of 555 euro.

Growing Pains of the Balice Airport
As the projected number of passengers this year
approaches the overall annual capacity of 3.5
million,
Krakow’s
Balice airport is bursting at the seams.
Its further extension, to be completed in 2010, will
eventually raise the volume to nine million
passengers per year. The blueprint for new air
terminal facilities provides also for a train
station, a multistory underground car park, and an
airport
hotel.

British Royalty in Krakow
British Prince Charles and his wife Camilla descended
on Krakow on April 29 to open a Jewish Community
Center at 24 Miodowa street. A five-story modern
eyesore adjacent to the 19th-century graceful
Tempel Synagogue, the building has come into
existence thanks to the Prince of Wales who
persuaded the World Jewish Relief, a UK’s charity,
to finance its construction in the wake of his
previous visit in 2002. Prince Charles himself
nailed the mezuzah to the doorpost. After the
opening ceremony he had a kosher lunch in the garden
of Kupa Synagogue
opposite.

Formula One Krakow Hero
The whole city rejoices at the win of Rober Kubica, a
native of Krakow, in Formula One’s Grand Prix Canada
race in Montreal. The triumph on Sunday, May 8 was
the first victory in the career of the 23-year-old
driver of BMW Sauber team and the first ever for a
Polish national. Also, it has made Kubica the leader
of this year’s F1 series ahead of the world
champion, Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari, and
UK’s Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes McLaren. Montreal
was Robert Kubica’s 29th race in Formula One.

EU Pledges a Couple of Billions for MalopolskaMalopolska
Province, whose capital city is Krakow,
has secured euro 1.29 billion from the European
Union’s funds for major infrastructure projects in
the region in the years 2007-2013. Plus the EU
separate grant to the tune of 590 million euros has
been earmarked under the Human Capital program for
varied measures to boost competitiveness of
Malopolska’s workforce.

Honorary Doctor Steven Spielberg
Krakow's Jagiellonian
University has conferred an honorary doctorate
on the Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg. He has
been recognized for his 'cinematic artistry' and
'attachment to the tradition and humane values' as
well as his ‘contribution to the commemoration of
Holocaust’. Mr Spielberg authored famous movie,
'Schindler's List', that shows the tragedy of the
Jewish ghetto in Krakow. The Krakow
University dates back to 1364 but it awarded its
first honorary doctorate in 1816. Since then it
honored this way 300-plus persons, outstanding
scientists from Poland and abroad.

Square Dancing for the Record
Krakow holds the world record in simultaneous dancing.
It was set on August 31, 2008 when 1635 couples of
dancers waltzed at the same time for five minutes on
Krakow’s central Rynek Glowny square. The
record-breaking event was arranged by one of
Poland’s television networks, TVN, with the Guinness
Book of Records in mind.

Ultimate Cycling
Organizers of the 65th Tour de Pologne have chosen
Krakow for the finish of its course of 1259
kilometers in the late September, 2008. The race is
part of the main Pro Tour professional cycling
circuit alongside Tour de France, Italy’s Giro
d’Italia, or Spain’s Vuelta a Espana with all top
teams participating. The first Tour de Pologne took
place in 1928.

Spanking Few Film FestivalKrakow has got
a brand-new film festival
in addition to the city’s several other cinematic
events, including the 48-year-old Krakow Film
Festival. The 1st Off Camera International Festival
of Independent Cinema screened 120 indie movies in
four theaters and three clubs in the first five days
of October 2008. Its international jury awarded the
main prize of 100,000 euro to the USA’s Azazel
Jacobs for his highly autobiographical ‘Mama’s Boy’.
There was also another, parallel festival
competition for movies shot with a cellphone where
the prize money for the winner equaled the price of
a professional camcorder.

Krakow Lion Monster
Krakow has got a local cousin of the Loch Ness Monster
and the yeti. The creature has four paws, seemingly
resembles a lioness or a cougar, and reportedly it
was seen near village of Jeziorzany some 18 km
southeast of the city center in early October and
even filmed with a cellphone.
Later the same day over 100 policemen, a
counter-terrorist unit, two police helicopters,
several squads of firefighters and rangers, plus
paramedic ambulance crews tried to track and corner
the mysterious animal. In the afternoon police
infrared cameras apparently discovered it in the
thicket of a field of maize. Yet over the ensuing
night the creature disappeared. The hunt cost an
equivalent of some 15,000 euro.

Funshop? Not So Funny
A shop with legal drugs has opened in Krakow selling
various over-the-counter alleged alternatives to
illicit dope. The little store – labeled as a ‘funshop’
by its owners, a UK-based World Wide Supplements
Importer – is hidden in the courtyard of a
nondescript tenement house at Starowislna streets.
It sells both chemicals and herbal concoctions and
its customer base consist mostly of the young
patrons of Krakow’s numerous night clubs. Legal as
it may be, the merchandise can prove both highly
addictive and hazardous to health, drug experts
warn.

No Frills, No Fly
Ryanair, the Irish no-frills carrier, has announced
that it suspends all its
flights from and to Krakow between
November 4 and December 19, 2008. The airline’s
management excuses itself by pointing to high fuel
costs and high airport tax at the
Krakow Airport. The airport has released
a statement in response revealing that Ryanair
demanded a blanket tax exemption in November and
December and accusing the carrier of disregard for
passengers.

Remains of Gen. Sikorski to Be Examined
Krakow Archbishop, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, has
given permission to exhume the remains of General
Wladyslaw Sikorski on November 25 and thus he has
made possible a post-mortem. Gen. Sikorski, the
wartime premier of Poland’s government in exile and
the commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces,
was killed in a mysterious plane crash near
Gibraltar on July 4, 1943. Blanket of secrecy thrown
over the accident and some dubious official findings
of the British authorities gave rise to a number of
conspiracy theories. Recently Poland’s state agency
responsible for investigating war crimes and human
rights violations of the past, Instytut Pamieci
Narodowej (Institute for the National Remembrance),
has opened an inquiry into the death of one of the
country’s most revered heroes. In 1993 Gen. Sikorski
was laid to rest in the crypt of
Krakow’s Wawel Cathedral alongside the
Polish royalty and some other great Poles.

Dalai Lama's Visit to Krakow
The Dalai Lama arrived to Krakow on Sunday, December 7
to receive next day an honorary doctorate of
philosophy conferred on him in October 2007 by the
city's Jagiellonian University, Poland's oldest and
most revered. The ceremony took place in the
university's Collegium Novum, 24 Golebia street at
Planty gardens, on December 8 at 9 a.m. In the
afternoon, at 3 p.m. on the same day the Dalai Lama
met Krakow's academic community in the Jagiellonian
University's biggest hall, Auditorium Maximum at 33
Krupnicza street. After arriving to the
Krakow airport at 9 p.m. on Sunday he had
met the city’s nearly twenty Buddhist communities
representing various branches of the religion. The
644-year-old
Krakow university was Poland's first to
award an honorary doctorate to the Dalai Lama.

Santa Claus Is Legal At Last!
Mayor of Krakow has lifted the ban on Santas wandering
the streets one of his predecessors introduced more
than 100 years ago. The then mayor Jozef Friedlein
banned men disguised as Santa Claus as well as
accompanying devils and angels from the city by the
end of the 19th century because of frequent alcohol
abuse among them. The century-old prohibition,
albeit forgotten and disobeyed from time immemorial,
has been repealed on December 2, 2008 – just in time
for the parade of 100 Santas to be hold legally in
downtown Krakow three days later. The organizers
guaranteed sobriety of every Father
Christmas.

Thousands Feasted on Charity
The homeless from all over Poland arrived in their
thousands on
Krakow’s huge Rynek Glowny central square
on Sunday, December 21 to enjoy the traditional free
meal in the run-up of Christmas. The organizers had
supplied 150,000 pierog dumplings, 6,000 liters of
mushroom soup, and 6,000 liters of stewed sauerkraut
with mushrooms – the Polish traditional Yule dishes
– among piles of other foods. And the city residents
brought durable food products to hand them out to
the homeless. One of them was the
mayor of Krakow who also offered
Christmas greetings.